The Adventures of the Vessel Condesa

Clark July 10th, 2007

I’ve been back in California for about a week now, and immersed in the Transpac regatta (from Los Angeles to Honolulu). My older brother David is racing, and I’m delivering one of the race boats back to California after the race. I went to the big celebration dinner in Long Beach a few days ago and got to rub elbows with Roy Disney and other sailing rock stars.

I read the sailing instructions and rules, and was overwhelmed by the amount of safety requirements and gadgetry. My brother had to attend an all-day safety at sea seminar, each boat carries a tracking device that constantly transmits their position throughout the race, and each crewmember wears a transponder that can be tracked from the mother ship or emergency craft in the event of a man overboard. I certainly didn’t have any such stuff for my recent driftings around the Horn and Southern Ocean, and it seemed like overkill for what is a pretty tame hop through the Tradewind belt to Hawaii. Better safe than sorry, I guess, but how much does all this stuff cost?

We went out on our family boat to watch the start of the race. The boat my brother was on had its tracking device mounted on the pushpit rail and each crewmmber was wearing an automatically inflating life preserver and electronic locating device, but this didn’t stop one of the crewmembers from nearly severing his finger with a rigging knife about an hour after the start. We charged at full speed to take the injured guy off, but a fast catamaran beat us to it and took the guy to the ER. My brother’s boat had to restart the race with seven people, since they have to finish with the same number they started with.

I suppose there is some lesson here about all the money and gadgetry in the world being no substitute for common sense and good seamanship.

• South America
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